


Grey Eyes

by bruisedsky



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Oneshot Kaneki Ken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 00:39:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7131020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bruisedsky/pseuds/bruisedsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had become addicted to pain. Kaneki felt his own: he carried it deep inside. He shouldered through his pain because that was simply the price to pay for seeing others’, for helping them reconcile with theirs.</p><p>He spiraled into a void, falling faster, deeper and deeper, each time he killed. But it was good, wasn’t it, he asked himself each time. And each time, the answer was yes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grey Eyes

When Ken Kaneki stood before the mirror, chunks of his silver white hair fell into his eyes. One grey eye, the other black, fissured by blood, and a gleaming red pupil. That was what he saw when he took his mask off. When the pangs of hunger that had become normal had ceased throbbing for an instant, leaving behind emptiness and the calm of oblivion. When he opened his eyes to see again and didn’t taste the blood clouding his tongue.

When the mad rush of movement and death had left him, leaving behind grey matter where it had been, leaving him unmoored, bobbing alone, inactive when he felt it was his purpose to hurt and push past, to hurt so that he wouldn’t have to face his own grey eye, because he was too drunk on blood and delirium to feel guilt.

He had become addicted to pain. Kaneki felt his own: he carried it deep inside. He shouldered through his pain because that was simply the price to pay for seeing others’, for helping them reconcile with theirs. And each time he pulled back their clothes, their armor, cast aside their weapons, to reveal their bare, pale necks, he shuddered with pleasure. He tasted their struggle on his lips, and sometimes he still wept over them, pinkish tears of equal parts salt and blood. 

Sometimes, before he bent over them, before he broke their will, he cracked his knuckles. The sharp cracks helped ground him before he sank to his knees. The action reminded him of someone. Someone Kaneki understood now that had only been using Kaneki’s pain to save himself. He understood because there was no choice in it, really. Kaneki did the same each day, too. 

Sometimes, to help his victims as he drank, he told them to count down by sevens, starting from one thousand. It had helped him a long time ago to concentrate, to distance himself from the pain, too.

But when it was all over, his mind was completely still. And Kaneki found himself facing the reflection in the mirror, which was of blame.

His grey eyes peered back at him beneath swaths of silver and he saw another boy, one he half remembered and would have liked to have known better: a lost boy with dark eyes and dark hair who had covered his kakugan with an eyepatch, who cried over the sight of blood, who forced human food down his throat to deny himself, and who let his victims go, biting his own tongue to stay in control. 

Kaneki scorned the other boy for his weakness, his innocence. But each time, a tiny part that Kaneki thought he had crushed long ago missed the boy, for the same reasons he loathed him.

He crushed it again, each time. And then he felt nothing but hunger. 

His eyes turned red with murder, and then he couldn’t see anymore, didn’t want to see, because red was the color of death but to him, it was beautiful. He swept through it, buckets and buckets of red, swirling his own artwork, sating his own thirst.

He didn’t cry anymore. He hadn’t for a long time.

And Kaneki realized suddenly that it was in the throes of battle that he found himself, that he had given up comfort and companionship to accept the dark cloak of power and the red, red of kagune and rush of exhilaration and blood and death. It wasn’t a sacrifice, really. It had never been. Because he finally belonged.

He laughed to himself sometimes as he spun his own path of destruction, leaving behind nothing but red footprints of power. He couldn’t see anything past his own desire and the blood running in rivers through his hands anymore, but that was what he had sought, hadn’t he? He laughed as he stumbled through the wasteland of his own creation, drowning in twisted glee and blood, always blood, smiling behind his mask, baring his teeth as he leaned down each time to sink them into flesh, to live.

He spiraled into a void, falling faster, deeper and deeper, each time he killed. But it was good, wasn’t it, he asked himself each time. And each time, the answer was yes.

Kaneki had fallen; he had reached the bottom. But he was still burning with energy, longing for blood, so he kept going. Kaneki kept going until he found himself poised inches from the neck of a boy with dirty blonde hair and grey armor, curled into himself on dusty concrete, looking up at him with infinite brown eyes.

Hide whispered, “Kaneki.” 

A slow, tired smirk spread across Hide’s face, curving his lips, reminiscent of the days when they used to walk together at school, Hide’s arms behind his head, orange headphones around his neck, while the boy with the white eyepatch had walked beside him, books in his arms. Hide gazed up at Kaneki’s shadowed face, taking in his mask, his eyes, his hair that was silver in the moonlight.

“Hey, Kaneki,” he said again, and a single tear pink with blood slipped from the corner of Kaneki’s eye.

Kaneki dropped to his knees. When he opened his eyes, he didn’t see another faceless human pinned before him, he saw Hide, his hair grown out, a sad smile playing on his lips, hazel eyes gentle.

“It’s okay,” Hide whispered, his arms reaching out to catch Kaneki as his kagune crumpled, even as he slowly bled to death. “Kaneki…”

“Hide.” Kaneki’s voice hitched, the guilt breaking in waves over him, his hands that had stained with so much blood. “Hide, please…go.”

Hide pushed himself up into a sitting position and he smiled again, his eyes searching Kaneki’s, always seeing him and loving him even through the bloody wreckage they’d left behind. “It’s okay,” he repeated, and then Kaneki was crashing into him, their lips colliding, kissing for all the times they hadn’t before. Hide clutched Kaneki to him, holding him even as he tasted the blood on Kaneki’s lips, even as he felt Kaneki trembling with the strain of holding himself back. 

When they broke apart, Kaneki staggered back, wiping the blood from his lips, staring at his hands in revulsion. He pressed his hands to his eyes and cried, ripping his mask off his face, crying because suddenly, before Hide, he felt so human, so bare, and the emptiness where he’d ripped into himself and broke his humanity came crashing over him.

But when Hide looked up at him, the smile he’d never stopped wearing, because he had always trusted Kaneki, always loved him even as Kaneki's lips had met Hide's neck to kill, was enough to seal the burning hole in Kaneki’s chest, and before him, Kaneki felt whole again. 

“Come on,” he whispered, pulling Hide to his feet and helping Hide balance against him. “Let’s go home.”


End file.
